CGS Group LLC (CGS) is a small team of the world’s brightest and best Machinists, Gunsmiths, Designers, and Engineers focused on designing and manufacturing firearm silencers and custom built rifles. CGS approached the start of their business in 2014 with an eye on the future. Instead of expanding operations and facilities as they grew, they started with the facility they thought they would grow into. They took this same approach with their entire business, including the software that would manage the accounting, manufacturing and ATF bound book requirements.
After looking for a fully integrated, single source solution, Bobby West, a co-owner in CGS stated, “Most of the automated bound book software we found online was developed as a standalone system designed for point of sale. We needed a solution designed for manufacturers that was fully integrated into the rest of our software. We wanted no duplication of efforts which is error prone and not what we wanted to manage our ATF recording and reporting requirements.”
Bobby continued, “Business Automation Specialists of Minnesota (BASM) was the only company we found that has an automated bound book solution, Easy Bound Book®, that is truly integrated into an ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, that would work for us and our manufacturing needs. It is a perfectly paired solution.”
As a startup company keeping an eye on costs and doing things in an efficient manner, CGS tasked BASM with providing the most economical implementation possible. “I’ve worked for other companies where implementing software solutions and systems was really a nightmare,” recalled Bobby. “We couldn’t do that here. We had too much going on with getting the manufacturing facility and warehouse done along with all the other business startup chaos. We didn’t have the time or money to fuss around.”
BASM devised a plan to complete the entire implementation remotely. With no travel time or related costs, the BASM team started with online training that was recorded for future reference. Once that was completed, the go live was also launched remotely. Bobby stated, “The team was able to jump right in and start using the system. When needed, they re-watch the recorded training videos so they can answer their own questions. For the most part the go live happened without hiccups and the implementation was painless.”
When all was said and done, the implementation actually came in 26% under budget, as additional support fees that were built in didn’t need to be utilized. CGS realized all of their goals and more.
“The integration between Easy Bound Book and NAV is invisible, but also ever present,” Bobby said. “As we make orders and serialized units are received they are entered into NAV where Easy Bound Book fields have been seamlessly integrated. As units are built out all of the information on the serialized pieces flows through NAV into the completed product. This would be a daunting task to track manually – especially as we grow, but NAV and Easy Bound Book take care of that for us. Vendors, customers, parts, FFL’s and serialized items are all managed without us having to think about our bound book. The system even has approvals set up to catch errors before they happen.”
Bobby concluded, “We are very pleased with the remote implementation and the process BASM followed. There was a lot of trepidation leading up to a remote implementation, but BASM pulled it off, and did it under budget. They have been great to work with and are also very open to making changes we need formatting reports, tracking extra requirements specific to the ATF and to our clients.”